Well, its basically the same in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland (which together account for a huge part of world wide soaring population): You don't need to buy a ship for competition, you just take a club ship. In our club, we have 2x ASK21, 2x DuoDiscus, 2x LS4, 2x LS18-18.

But in the end, 90% of soaring pilots don't care about competitions, so the idea that competition classes have an influence on population is rather crude...